[4] The circumstances must not be of a momentous nature:
no poor man would laugh or smile on suddenly hearing that a large
fortune had been bequeathed to him. If the mind is strongly
excited by pleasurable feelings, and any little unexpected event
or thought occurs, then, as Mr. Herbert Spencer remarks,[5] "a large
amount of nervous energy, instead of being allowed to expend itself
in producing an equivalent amount of the new thoughts and emotion
which were nascent, is suddenly checked in its flow." . . . "The
excess must discharge itself in some other direction, and there
results an efflux through the motor nerves to various classes of
the muscles, producing the half-convulsive actions we term laughter."
An observation, bearing on this point, was made by a correspondent
during the recent siege of Paris, namely, that the German soldiers.
after strong excitement from exposure to extreme danger, were particularly
apt to burst out into loud laughter at the smallest joke.
So again when young children are just beginning to cry,
an unexpected event will sometimes suddenly turn their crying
into laughter, which apparently serves equally well to expend
their superfluous nervous energy.
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